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The King In Yellow

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THE KING IN YELLOW

BY

ROBERT W. CHAMBERS






Original publication date: 1895


THE KING IN YELLOW
IS DEDICATED
TO
MY BROTHER

Along the shore the cloud waves break,
The twin suns sink beneath the lake,
The shadows lengthen
In Carcosa.

Strange is the night where black stars rise,
And strange moons circle through the skies
But stranger still is
Lost Carcosa.

Songs that the Hyades shall sing,
Where flap the tatters of the King,
Must die unheard in
Dim Carcosa.

Song of my soul, my voice is dead;
Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed
Shall dry and die in
Lost Carcosa.

Cassilda's Song in "The King in Yellow," Act i, Scene 2.




THE REPAIRER OF REPUTATIONS


I

"Ne raillons pas les fous; leur folie dure plus longtemps que
la nôtre.... Voila toute la différence."

Toward the end of the year 1920 the Government of the United States had
practically completed the programme, adopted during the last months of
President Winthrop's administration. The country was apparently tranquil.
Everybody knows how the Tariff and Labour questions were settled. The war
with Germany, incident on that country's seizure of the Samoan Islands,
had left no visible scars upon the republic, and the temporary occupation
of Norfolk by the invading army had been forgotten in the joy over
repeated naval victories, and the subsequent ridiculous plight of General
Von Gartenlaube's forces in the State of New Jersey. The Cuban and
Hawaiian investments had paid one hundred per cent and the territory of
Samoa was well worth its cost as a coaling station. The country was in a
superb state of defence. Every coast city had been well supplied with land
fortifications; the army under the parental eye of the General Staff,
organized according to the Prussian system, had been increased to 300,000
men, with a territorial reserve of a million; and six magnificent
squadrons of cruisers and battle-ships patrolled the six stations of the
navigable seas, leaving a steam reserve amply fitted to control home
waters. The gentlemen from the West had at last been constrained to
acknowledge that a college for the training of diplomats was as necessary
as law schools are for the training of barristers; consequently we were no
longer represented abroad by incompetent patriots. The nation was
prosperous; Chicago, for a moment paralyzed after a second great fire, had
risen from its ruins, white and imperial, and more beautiful than the white
city which had been built for its plaything in 1893. Everywhere good
architecture was replacing bad, and even in New York, a sudden craving for
decency had swept away a great portion of the existing horrors. Streets
had been widened, properly paved and lighted, trees had been planted,
squares laid out, elevated structures demolished and underground roads
built to replace them. The new government buildings and barracks were fine
bits of architecture, and the long system of stone quays which completely
surrounded the island had been turned into parks which proved a god-send
to the population. The subsidizing of the state theatre and state opera
brought its own reward. The United States National Academy of Design was
much like European institutions of the same kind. Nobody envied the
Secretary of Fine Arts, either his cabinet position or his portfolio. The
Secretary of Forestry and Game Preservation had a much easier time, thanks
to the new system of National Mounted Police. We had profited well by the
latest treaties with France and England; the exclusion of foreign-born
Jews as a measure of self-preservation, the settlement of the new
independent negro state of Suanee, the checking of immigration, the new
laws concerning naturalization, and the gradual centralization of power in
the executive all contributed to national calm and prosperity. When the
Government solved the Indian problem and squadrons of Indian cavalry
scouts in native costume were substituted for the pitiable organizations
tacked on to the tail of skeletonized regiments by a former Secretary of
War, the nation drew a long sigh of relief. When, after the colossal
Congress of Religions, bigotry and intolerance were laid in their graves
and kindness and charity began to draw warring sects together, many
thought the millennium had arrived, at least in the new world which after
all is a world by itself.

But self-preservation is the first law, and the United States had to look
on in helpless sorrow as Germany, Italy, Spain and Belgium writhed in the
throes of Anarchy, while Russia, watching from the Caucasus, stooped and
bound them one by one.

In the city of New York the summer of 1899 was signalized by the
dismantling of the Elevated Railroads. The summer of 1900 will live in
the memories of New York people for many a cycle; the Dodge Statue was
removed in that year. In the following winter began that agitation for
the repeal of the laws prohibiting suicide which bore its final fruit in
the month of April, 1920, when the first Government Lethal Chamber was
opened on Washington Square.

I had walked down that day from Dr. Archer's house on Madison Avenue,
where I had been as a mere formality. Ever since that fall from my horse,
four years before, I had been troubled at times with pains in the back of
my head and neck, but now for months they had been absent, and the doctor
sent me away that day saying there was nothing more to be cured in me. It
was hardly worth his fee to be told that; I knew it myself. Still I did
not grudge him the money. What I minded was the mistake which he made at
first. When they picked me up from the pavement where I lay unconscious,
and somebody had mercifully sent a bullet through my horse's head, I was
carried to Dr. Archer, and he, pronouncing my brain affected, placed me
in his private asylum where I was obliged to endure treatment for
insanity. At last he decided that I was well, and I, knowing that my mind
had always been as sound as his, if not sounder, "paid my tuition" as he
jokingly called it, and left. I told him, smiling, that I would get even
with him for his mistake, and he laughed heartily, and asked me to call
once in a while. I did so, hoping for a chance to even up accounts, but
he gave me none, and I told him I would wait.

The fall from my horse had fortunately left no evil results; on the
contrary it had changed my whole character for the better. From a lazy
young man about town, I had become active, energetic, temperate, and
above all--oh, above all else--ambitious. There was only one thing which
troubled me, I laughed at my own uneasiness, and yet it troubled me.

During my convalescence I had bought and read for the first time, _The
King in Yellow_. I remember after finishing the first act that it
occurred to me that I had better stop. I started up and flung the book
into the fireplace; the volume struck the barred grate and fell open on
the hearth in the firelight. If I had not caught a glimpse of the opening
words in the second act I should never have finished it, but as I stooped
to pick it up, my eyes became riveted to the open page, and with a cry of
terror, or perhaps it was of joy so poignant that I suffered in every
nerve, I snatched the thing out of the coals and crept shaking to my
bedroom, where I read it and reread it, and wept and laughed and trembled
with a horror which at times assails me yet. This is the thing that
troubles me, for I cannot forget Carcosa where black stars hang in the
heavens; where the shadows of men's thoughts lengthen in the afternoon,
when the twin suns sink into the lake of Hali; and my mind will bear for
ever the memory of the Pallid Mask. I pray God will curse the writer, as
the writer has cursed the world with this beautiful, stupendous creation,
terrible in its simplicity, irresistible in its truth--a world which now
trembles before the King in Yellow. When the French Government seized the
translated copies which had just arrived in Paris, London, of course,
became eager to read it. It is well known how the book spread like an
infectious disease, from city to city, from continent to continent,
barred out here, confiscated there, denounced by Press and pulpit,
censured even by the most advanced of literary anarchists. No definite
principles had been violated in those wicked pages, no doctrine
promulgated, no convictions outraged. It could not be judged by any known
standard, yet, although it was acknowledged that the supreme note of art
had been struck in _The King in Yellow_, all felt that human nature
could not bear the strain, nor thrive on words in which the essence of
purest poison lurked. The very banality and innocence of the first act
only allowed the blow to fall afterward with more awful effect.

It was, I remember, the 13th day of April, 1920, that the first
Government Lethal Chamber was established on the south side of Washington
Square, between Wooster Street and South Fifth Avenue. The block which
had formerly consisted of a lot of shabby old buildings, used as cafés
and restaurants for foreigners, had been acquired by the Government in
the winter of 1898. The French and Italian cafés and restaurants were
torn down; the whole block was enclosed by a gilded iron railing, and
converted into a lovely garden with lawns, flowers and fountains. In the
centre of the garden stood a small, white building, severely classical in
architecture, and surrounded by thickets of flowers. Six Ionic columns
supported the roof, and the single door was of bronze. A splendid marble
group of the "Fates" stood before the door, the work of a young American
sculptor, Boris Yvain, who had died in Paris when only twenty-three years
old.

The inauguration ceremonies were in progress as I crossed University
Place and entered the square. I threaded my way through the silent throng
of spectators, but was stopped at Fourth Street by a cordon of police. A
regiment of United States lancers were drawn up in a hollow square round
the Lethal Chamber. On a raised tribune facing Washington Park stood the
Governor of New York, and behind him were grouped the Mayor of New
York and Brooklyn, the Inspector-General of Police, the Commandant of
the state troops, Colonel Livingston, military aid to the President of the
United States, General Blount, commanding at Governor's Island,
Major-General Hamilton, commanding the garrison of New York and Brooklyn,
Admiral Buffby of the fleet in the North River, Surgeon-General
Lanceford, the staff of the National Free Hospital, Senators Wyse and
Franklin of New York, and the Commissioner of Public Works. The tribune
was surrounded by a squadron of hussars of the National Guard.

The Governor was finishing his reply to the short speech of the
Surgeon-General. I heard him say: "The laws prohibiting suicide and
providing punishment for any attempt at self-destruction have been
repealed. The Government has seen fit to acknowledge the right of man to
end an existence which may have become intolerable to him, through
physical suffering or mental despair. It is believed that the community
will be benefited by the removal of such people from their midst. Since
the passage of this law, the number of suicides in the United States has
not increased. Now the Government has determined to establish a Lethal
Chamber in every city, town and village in the country, it remains to be
seen whether or not that class of human creatures from whose desponding
ranks new victims of self-destruction fall daily will accept the relief
thus provided." He paused, and turned to the white Lethal Chamber. The
silence in the street was absolute. "There a painless death awaits him
who can no longer bear the sorrows of this life. If death is welcome let
him seek it there." Then quickly turning to the military aid of the
President's household, he said, "I declare the Lethal Chamber open," and
again facing the vast crowd he cried in a clear voice: "Citizens of New
York and of the United States of America, through me the Government
declares the Lethal Chamber to be open."

The solemn hush was broken by a sharp cry of command, the squadron of
hussars filed after the Governor's carriage, the lancers wheeled and
formed along Fifth Avenue to wait for the commandant of the garrison, and
the mounted police followed them. I left the crowd to gape and stare at
the white marble Death Chamber, and, crossing South Fifth Avenue, walked
along the western side of that thoroughfare to Bleecker Street. Then I
turned to the right and stopped before a dingy shop which bore the sign:

HAWBERK, ARMOURER.

I glanced in at the doorway and saw Hawberk busy in his little shop at
the end of the hall. He looked up, and catching sight of me cried in his
deep, hearty voice, "Come in, Mr. Castaigne!" Constance, his daughter,
rose to meet me as I crossed the threshold, and held out her pretty
hand, but I saw the blush of disappointment on her cheeks, and knew
that it was another Castaigne she had expected, my cousin Louis. I
smiled at her confusion and complimented her on the banner she was
embroidering from a coloured plate. Old Hawberk sat riveting the worn
greaves of some ancient suit of armour, and the ting! ting! ting! of his
little hammer sounded pleasantly in the quaint shop. Presently he
dropped his hammer, and fussed about for a moment with a tiny wrench.
The soft clash of the mail sent a thrill of pleasure through me. I
loved to hear the music of steel brushing against steel, the mellow
shock of the mallet on thigh pieces, and the jingle of chain armour.
That was the only reason I went to see Hawberk. He had never interested
me personally, nor did Constance, except for the fact of her being in
love with Louis. This did occupy my attention, and sometimes even kept
me awake at night. But I knew in my heart that all would come right,
and that I should arrange their future as I expected to arrange that of
my kind doctor, John Archer. However, I should never have troubled
myself about visiting them just then, had it not been, as I say, that
the music of the tinkling hammer had for me this strong fascination. I
would sit for hours, listening and listening, and when a stray sunbeam
struck the inlaid steel, the sensation it gave me was almost too keen
to endure. My eyes would become fixed, dilating with a pleasure that
stretched every nerve almost to breaking, until some movement of the
old armourer cut off the ray of sunlight, then, still thrilling
secretly, I leaned back and listened again to the sound of the
polishing rag, swish! swish! rubbing rust from the rivets.

Constance worked with the embroidery over her knees, now and then pausing
to examine more closely the pattern in the coloured plate from the
Metropolitan Museum.

"Who is this for?" I asked.

Hawberk explained, that in addition to the treasures of armour in the
Metropolitan Museum of which he had been appointed armourer, he also
had charge of several collections belonging to rich amateurs. This was the
missing greave of a famous suit which a client of his had traced to a
little shop in Paris on the Quai d'Orsay. He, Hawberk, had negotiated for
and secured the greave, and now the suit was complete. He laid down his
hammer and read me the history of the suit, traced since 1450 from owner
to owner until it was acquired by Thomas Stainbridge. When his superb
collection was sold, this client of Hawberk's bought the suit, and since
then the search for the missing greave had been pushed until it was,
almost by accident, located in Paris.

"Did you continue the search so persistently without any certainty of the
greave being still in existence?" I demanded.

"Of course," he replied coolly.

Then for the first time I took a personal interest in Hawberk.

"It was worth something to you," I ventured.

"No," he replied, laughing, "my pleasure in finding it was my reward."

"Have you no ambition to be rich?" I asked, smiling.

"My one ambition is to be the best armourer in the world," he answered
gravely.

Constance asked me if I had seen the ceremonies at the Lethal Chamber.
She herself had noticed cavalry passing up Broadway that morning, and had
wished to see the inauguration, but her father wanted the banner
finished, and she had stayed at his request.

"Did you see your cousin, Mr. Castaigne, there?" she asked, with the
slightest tremor of her soft eyelashes.

"No," I replied carelessly. "Louis' regiment is manoeuvring out in
Westchester County." I rose and picked up my hat and cane.

"Are you going upstairs to see the lunatic again?" laughed old Hawberk.
If Hawberk knew how I loathe that word "lunatic," he would never use it
in my presence. It rouses certain feelings within me which I do not care
to explain. However, I answered him quietly: "I think I shall drop in and
see Mr. Wilde for a moment or two."

"Poor fellow," said Constance, with a shake of the head, "it must be hard
to live alone year after year poor, crippled and almost demented. It is
very good of you, Mr. Castaigne, to visit him as often as you do."

"I think he is vicious," observed Hawberk, beginning again with his
hammer. I listened to the golden tinkle on the greave plates; when he had
finished I replied:

"No, he is not vicious, nor is he in the least demented. His mind is a
wonder chamber, from which he can extract treasures that you and I would
give years of our life to acquire."'

Hawberk laughed.

I continued a little impatiently: "He knows history as no one else could
know it. Nothing, however trivial, escapes his search, and his memory is
so absolute, so precise in details, that were it known in New York that
such a man existed, the people could not honour him enough."

"Nonsense," muttered Hawberk, searching on the floor for a fallen rivet.

"Is it nonsense," I asked, managing to suppress what I felt, "is it
nonsense when he says that the tassets and cuissards of the enamelled
suit of armour commonly known as the 'Prince's Emblazoned' can be found
among a mass of rusty theatrical properties, broken stoves and
ragpicker's refuse in a garret in Pell Street?"

Hawberk's hammer fell to the ground, but he picked it up and asked, with
a great deal of calm, how I knew that the tassets and left cuissard were
missing from the "Prince's Emblazoned."

"I did not know until Mr. Wilde mentioned it to me the other day. He said
they were in the garret of 998 Pell Street."

"Nonsense," he cried, but I noticed his hand trembling under his leathern
apron.

"Is this nonsense too?" I asked pleasantly, "is it nonsense when Mr.
Wilde continually speaks of you as the Marquis of Avonshire and of Miss
Constance--"

I did not finish, for Constance had started to her feet with terror
written on every feature. Hawberk looked at me and slowly smoothed his
leathern apron.

"That is impossible," he observed, "Mr. Wilde may know a great many
things--"

"About armour, for instance, and the 'Prince's Emblazoned,'" I
interposed, smiling.

"Yes," he continued, slowly, "about armour also--may be--but he is wrong
in regard to the Marquis of Avonshire, who, as you know, killed his
wife's traducer years ago, and went to Australia where he did not long
survive his wife."

"Mr. Wilde is wrong," murmured Constance. Her lips were blanched, but her
voice was sweet and calm.

"Let us agree, if you please, that in this one circumstance Mr. Wilde is
wrong," I said.




II

I climbed the three dilapidated flights of stairs, which I had so often
climbed before, and knocked at a small door at the end of the corridor.
Mr. Wilde opened the door and I walked in.

When he had double-locked the door and pushed a heavy chest against it,
he came and sat down beside me, peering up into my face with his little
light-coloured eyes. Half a dozen new scratches covered his nose and
cheeks, and the silver wires which supported his artificial ears had
become displaced. I thought I had never seen him so hideously
fascinating. He had no ears. The artificial ones, which now stood out at
an angle from the fine wire, were his one weakness. They were made of wax
and painted a shell pink, but the rest of his face was yellow. He might
better have revelled in the luxury of some artificial fingers for his
left hand, which was absolutely fingerless, but it seemed to cause him no
inconvenience, and he was satisfied with his wax ears. He was very small,
scarcely higher than a child of ten, but his arms were magnificently
developed, and his thighs as thick as any athlete's. Still, the most
remarkable thing about Mr. Wilde was that a man of his marvellous
intelligence and knowledge should have such a head. It was flat and
pointed, like the heads of many of those unfortunates whom people
imprison in asylums for the weak-minded. Many called him insane, but I
knew him to be as sane as I was.

I do not deny that he was eccentric; the mania he had for keeping that
cat and teasing her until she flew at his face like a demon, was
certainly eccentric. I never could understand why he kept the creature,
nor what pleasure he found in shutting himself up in his room with this
surly, vicious beast. I remember once, glancing up from the manuscript I
was studying by the light of some tallow dips, and seeing Mr. Wilde
squatting motionless on his high chair, his eyes fairly blazing with
excitement, while the cat, which had risen from her place before the
stove, came creeping across the floor right at him. Before I could move
she flattened her belly to the ground, crouched, trembled, and sprang
into his face. Howling and foaming they rolled over and over on the
floor, scratching and clawing, until the cat screamed and fled under the
cabinet, and Mr. Wilde turned over on his back, his limbs contracting and
curling up like the legs of a dying spider. He _was_ eccentric.

Mr. Wilde had climbed into his high chair, and, after studying my face,
picked up a dog's-eared ledger and opened it.

"Henry B. Matthews," he read, "book-keeper with Whysot Whysot and
Company, dealers in church ornaments. Called April 3rd. Reputation
damaged on the race-track. Known as a welcher. Reputation to be repaired
by August 1st. Retainer Five Dollars." He turned the page and ran his
fingerless knuckles down the closely-written columns.

"P. Greene Dusenberry, Minister of the Gospel, Fairbeach, New Jersey.
Reputation damaged in the Bowery. To be repaired as soon as possible.
Retainer $100."

He coughed and added, "Called, April 6th."

"Then you are not in need of money, Mr. Wilde," I inquired.

"Listen," he coughed again.

"Mrs. C. Hamilton Chester, of Chester Park, New York City. Called April
7th. Reputation damaged at Dieppe, France. To be repaired by October 1st
Retainer $500.

"Note.--C. Hamilton Chester, Captain U.S.S. 'Avalanche', ordered home
from South Sea Squadron October 1st."

"Well," I said, "the profession of a Repairer of Reputations is
lucrative."

His colourless eyes sought mine, "I only wanted to demonstrate that I
was correct. You said it was impossible to succeed as a Repairer of
Reputations; that even if I did succeed in certain cases it would cost
me more than I would gain by it. To-day I have five hundred men in my
employ, who are poorly paid, but who pursue the work with an enthusiasm
which possibly may be born of fear. These men enter every shade and grade
of society; some even are pillars of the most exclusive social temples;
others are the prop and pride of the financial world; still others, hold
undisputed sway among the 'Fancy and the Talent.' I choose them at my
leisure from those who reply to my advertisements. It is easy enough,
they are all cowards. I could treble the number in twenty days if I
wished. So you see, those who have in their keeping the reputations of
their fellow-citizens, I have in my pay."

"They may turn on you," I suggested.

He rubbed his thumb over his cropped ears, and adjusted the wax
substitutes. "I think not," he murmured thoughtfully, "I seldom have to
apply the whip, and then only once. Besides they like their wages."

"How do you apply the whip?" I demanded.

His face for a moment was awful to look upon. His eyes dwindled to a pair
of green sparks.

"I invite them to come and have a little chat with me," he said in a soft
voice.

A knock at the door interrupted him, and his face resumed its amiable
expression.

"Who is it?" he inquired.

"Mr. Steylette," was the answer.

"Come to-morrow," replied Mr. Wilde.

"Impossible," began the other, but was silenced by a sort of bark from
Mr. Wilde.

"Come to-morrow," he repeated.

We heard somebody move away from the door and turn the corner by the
stairway.

"Who is that?" I asked.

"Arnold Steylette, Owner and Editor in Chief of the great New York
daily."

He drummed on the ledger with his fingerless hand adding: "I pay him very
badly, but he thinks it a good bargain."

"Arnold Steylette!" I repeated amazed.

"Yes," said Mr. Wilde, with a self-satisfied cough.

The cat, which had entered the room as he spoke, hesitated, looked up at
him and snarled. He climbed down from the chair and squatting on the
floor, took the creature into his arms and caressed her. The cat ceased
snarling and presently began a loud purring which seemed to increase in
timbre as he stroked her. "Where are the notes?" I asked. He pointed to
the table, and for the hundredth time I picked up the bundle of
manuscript entitled--

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